This lecture marked the birth of the term “big bang,” which has since been inextricably attached to the initial event from which our universe sprouted. Contrary to popular belief, Hoyle did not use the term in a derogatory manner. Rather, he was simply attempting to create a mental picture for his listeners. Ironically, a scientist who always opposed the idea behind this model coined and popularized the term big bang. The name has even survived a public referendum. In 1993 Sky & Telescope magazine solicited suggestions from readers for a better name—an act generally viewed as an attempt at cosmic political correctness. After three judges (including Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer and popularizer of science) sifted through the 13,099 entries, however, they found no worthy replacement. The title of this chapter (“B for Big Bang”) was fashioned after the title of a British television science-fiction drama, A for Andromeda, written by Hoyle and TV producer John Elliot. The seven-part series aired in 1961, and it featured actress Julie Christie in her first major role.

Fred Hoyle was born on June 24, 1915, in Gilstead, a village near the town of Bingley in West Yorkshire, England. His father was a wool and textiles merchant who was drafted into the Machine Gun Corps and dispatched to France during World War I. His mother studied music, and for a while played the piano in a local cinema, to accompany silent films. Fred Hoyle, who originally planned to be a chemist, studied mathematics at Cambridge, and he demonstrated such talent and accomplishments that he was elected fellow of St. John’s College in Cambridge in 1939. In 1958 he earned the prestigious Chair of Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge. Incidentally, George Darwin, Charles Darwin’s son, had held this chair between 1883 and 1912.

Signs of Hoyle’s relish for independence and sometimes dissension were apparent from an early age. He later recalled: “Between the ages of five and nine, I was almost perpetually at war with the education system . . . As soon as I learned from my mother that there was a place called school that I must attend willy nilly—a place where you were obliged to think about matters prescribed by a ‘teacher,’ not about matters decided by yourself—I was appalled.” His disdain for convention continued into his university years. In 1939 he decided to forgo a PhD degree for the “earthy motive,” in his words, of having to pay less income tax!

Not surprisingly, this curiosity-driven independent thinker matured to become a brilliant scientist. In terms of contributions to astrophysics and cosmology, Hoyle was probably the leading figure for at least a quarter century. At the same time, he never shied away from controversy. “To achieve anything really worthwhile in research,” he once wrote, “it is necessary to go against the opinions of one’s fellows. To do so successfully, not merely becoming a crackpot, requires fine judgment, especially on long-term issues that cannot be settled quickly.” We shall soon discover that Hoyle followed his own advice to a fault.

Even without World War II, 1939 was a critical year for Hoyle. It so happened that one after another, two of his research supervisors left Cambridge for appointments elsewhere. His third advisor was the great physicist Paul Dirac, one of the founders of quantum mechanics—the revolutionary new view of the subatomic microworld. Following the wealth of novel ideas of the 1920s, science of the late 1930s looked dull by comparison. Hoyle later wrote that Dirac told him one day in 1939, “In 1926 it was possible for people who were not very good to solve important problems, but now people who are very good cannot find important problems to solve.” Hoyle took this warning to heart and shifted his focus from pure, theoretical nuclear physics to the stars.